Apple just can't catch a break these
days when it comes to issues surrounding its iPhones. We all know
about the problems involving the iPhone 4, but complaints have also been flooding
in from iPhone 3G owners.

What seemed like a kind gesture by
Apple to provide iOS
4 to owners of the two-year-old iPhone 3G is turning into a bit
of a mess for the boys from Cupertino. Owners who have upgraded to
the latest version of iOS are witnessing massive performance
slowdowns, reduced battery life, and overheating machines.

The complaints started appearing on
Apple-oriented discussion forums soon after the update was released;
here are just a couple of examples from Mac
Rumors and the official Apple Discussions forum (38
pages long, 36
pages long).

According to the Wall
Street Journal, Apple is now looking into the problem, but
declined to state anything more than that. IOS 4 for the iPhone 3G is
already crippled relative to the versions available for the iPhone
3GS and iPhone 4 (no multitasking, no home screen wallpapers), so it
remains to be seen what else could be sacrificed to improve
performance on the two-year-old phone that is using the same
CPU/memory configuration as the original three-year-old iPhone.

TUAW has even made the
recommendation that those who haven't upgraded to iOS 4 should
stay far away.

it would be nice if you could set which apps multitask, and which ones don't. I've noticed that turning off Spotlight Search made my 3GS a bit snappier on iOS4. The camera still starts slower than before, though.